Quarantined (6/6)
Title: Quarantined
Character/Pairing: Wash/Elisabeth (friendship), Wash/Taylor, Jim/Elisabeth, Mark/Maddy, Skye/Carter, Mira/Guzman
Word Count: ~2300 for this chapter, ~14800 for entire story
Genre: Romance, Drama
Rating: PG-13
Summary: As far as she’s concerned, he’s never allowed to set foot near one of Malcolm’s research projects ever again.
Author’s Note: Fill for morganel’s Friday one word prompt “Quarantined” for Wash and Elisabeth. Note, this is set in the context of my other stories, but definitely not necessary to read those for this to make sense - just be aware that in my context now, Wash and Taylor are married and have a little girl named Gracie, and the Sixers have come back to Terra Nova.
Disclaimer is as usual - no profit, not mine, just borrowing.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Ten Days Later
It’s Friday morning, and Alicia is leaning against the rail in one of the guard towers on the north end of the colony. She and Carter came out here earlier to check out a reported hole in the fence, and after they’d been able to find and mend the hole themselves, she sent Carter back towards command, telling him she’d be back later.
This guard tower isn’t presently manned, and it grants a nice view of their fields and some of the mountains beyond the fence. The railing of this tower is pretty wide, so she hops up on it, leaning back against one of the roof supports as she sits cross-legged for balance.
It’s been over a week since the group in the infirmary was infected with the toxin Malcolm had been studying. Malcolm isn’t allowed back to work until Monday, and he’s still recovering and occasionally short of breath. Skye only had to take it easy for a couple of days, but Elisabeth had benched both Nathaniel and Mira for a full week. They’re both back on duty now, which is a good thing, as they were driving Alicia and Guz both nuts.
The whole experience shook all of them up. She has it on good authority that Carter and Guz are both about a breath away from proposing to Skye and Mira, respectively. She smiles at that thought and muses that if she was a betting woman, she'd put money on Guz and Mira being married inside of a month.
Alicia sighs as she gazes out over the fields, lost in thought. The experience with the toxin left Alicia feeling far more shaken than she likes. Nathaniel is fine now, the cough even mostly gone. But everything that happened brought a truth to light, one she really wasn’t ready to face.
She’s been moody ever since, even quieter than usual. She knows that Nathaniel has noticed that something is wrong - he misses precious little - but he seems to be giving her space. She just feels uneasy. She sighs again and uncrosses her legs, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs.
“I have no idea how you manage to sit like that.” Nathaniel’s voice makes her jump a little, and she has to grip the edge of the rail to not fall.
She looks up in surprise, and she’s dismayed to see that he’s less than two feet from her. He’s reaching for her as if he intends to steady her. She shoots him a glare, and he drops his hands, chuckling.
They look at each other for a moment before he turns serious. “You know, I’ve guessed that something was wrong, that you were distracted, but now I have confirmation. If you didn’t have something on your mind, there’s no way I’d have been able to sneak up on you like that.” He tentatively closes the distance between them, his expression one of concern. “What’s going on, Alicia?”
She briefly considers trying to put him off, but she knows she needs to talk about what’s been bothering her. She expels a nervous breath, closes her eyes and pinches her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know how to talk about it, Nathaniel.” She feels his hands grip her upper arms, and she opens her eyes again.
He’s standing directly in front of her now, and she turns on the rail to face him, letting her feet dangle in front of her. He looks at her, his eyes concerned and almost pleading. “Try, Alicia.”
“I just wasn’t prepared for what happened, Nathaniel. I’m prepared for us to be threatened by things like dinosaurs. But toxic plants that attack your respiratory system? That I wasn’t prepared for.”
“OK, I’ll allow that it was out of left field and pretty damned scary, but I don’t think that’s what this is about.” He pins her with his eyes.
She blinks, and suddenly, she can’t maintain eye contact. She folds her hands in her lap and she looks down, studying them intently. His hands tighten on her arms. Taking a deep breath, she softly says, “I talked to Elisabeth, Nathaniel. I know this probably hit you like it did because of your age, that Skye was infected long before you were, and she barely even had a low grade fever.”
“Alicia, I…” he begins to speak, but she shakes her head vigorously, eyes still turned down.
She finds that she can’t look at him as she speaks. She’s always hated showing weakness, showing vulnerability, and last week left her feeling more vulnerable than she’s felt since being pregnant with Gracie. “Intellectually, I’ve always known that chances are pretty good that I’ll outlive you, barring being eaten by a damned carno or something along those lines. But knowing something in your head and dealing with the potential reality of that are two very different things. And frankly, it’s a truth I wasn’t ready to consider, a truth I wasn’t ready to face.”
She continues to stare at her hands. “You know, I had my mom until I was 14, but outside of that, I’d never had anyone or anything constant in my life. I never relied on people or things.” She finally looks back up at him, this time with tears in her eyes. “Then you stumbled into my life and the medical tent, bleeding and grinning like a damned cheshire cat. You dragged me out of that tent with you that day, and I never looked back.”
She swallows a sob. “After that, you didn’t just make me part of your unit. You took me home with you when we were on leave, made sure I wasn’t spending breaks alone, everything. I don’t know if you understood then, hell, I don’t know if you understand now what that meant to me. You gave me a family. You made me part of your family. My heart broke when Ayani died, but not just because of what I knew it did to you. My heart also broke because I felt like I’d lost my sister and my nephew in one fell swoop.”
He’s silent, clearly surprised by her intensity. She wipes at her eyes. “Nathaniel, the truth is that I’ve loved you since I was nineteen years old. I may have only been in love with you since we started preparing to come here, but I’ve loved you for more than half of my life. Early on, it was as a friend and mentor. Then it was as a friend and colleague, a friend and fellow combatant.”
She pauses, taking another deep breath. “But for more than twenty years, Nathaniel, you’ve been there, even when you weren’t physically there. You’re my constant.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to function without you. I don’t think I’d even know where to start.” A few tears roll down her cheeks then, and she stops trying to wipe them away.
Instead of saying anything, he just pulls her from her perch on the rail and hugs her tight to his body. They stand there for quite some time, long enough for Alicia to get her tears under control.
“You’d start with Gracie, Alicia. She’s where you’d start, and I know that. When I thought you were dead before, I was lost. I tried to focus on the colony, on what I still had, but I couldn’t. I was completely adrift.” He leans back to meet her eyes, his filled with tears this time. “But for either of us, I know Gracie would be what would make us survive. She’d be the anchor we’d need.”
She nods and buries her face in his chest. “Deep down, I know that, Nathaniel, but I need you, too. I’d be able to be there for her, able to keep getting out of bed, but I’m not sure what I’d be able to manage beyond that.”
“Touché.” He hugs her tight to him again. “For what it’s worth, Alicia, I’ve loved you from the moment you first stitched me up and managed, with your rather deft use of eye rolls, sighs and glares, to be deferential and insubordinate at the same time. To this day, I still don’t know how you pulled it off, but there was no way I was leaving that tent without you right behind me. I just knew that was how it had to be.”
He then leans back to catch her eyes again. “But there’s more to it than that, Alicia. The truth is that if there had been no Ayani then, I would’ve been a goner for you in about half a heartbeat. I’d even venture to guess that if I’d met you and Ayani at the same time, as much as I would’ve admired her light and joy and wonder, you would’ve been the one I chose.”
She’s shocked at that, and it must show on her face. “I don’t regret loving Ayani, Alicia. The simple truth is that she was my opposite. Light where I was dark, joyful and innocent where I was jaded and cautious. She changed me, made me lighter. She was the love of my life, in that romantic, love story kind of way.”
Alicia nods and looks away briefly. She’d known that, but it doesn’t make it easier to hear. He won’t let her shy away, though.
He uses his fingers to tip her face back to his, and he kisses her gently, a soft, lingering caress of his lips against hers. “But love of my life or not, Alicia, she wasn’t my soul mate. She may have accepted me, but she didn’t always understand me - and I was fine with that. If she’d understood me, it would’ve stolen some of her light, some of her joy.”
He kisses her again. “But you, Alicia. You see me. You always have. You saw me and knew exactly how to push every single one of my buttons from moment one.”
Holding her face in his palm, he brushes his thumb across her cheek. “So, while Ayani may have been the love of my life, you, Alicia, you’re my soul mate. I think I knew that in the medical tent the day I met you. Keeping you near me was selfish on my part. Back then, every romantic thought was for Ayani, but I needed you too, and so I kept you close, probably ultimately driving away any man who dared to try to get close to you.”
She can’t speak. To say he shocked her with that confession would be a massive understatement. He’s the one to drop his eyes now. “Part of why I pulled away from you a little right after she died was out of guilt. I felt guilty for loving you, even though we were never inappropriate, even though it was never a betrayal of Ayani. But when I found out that you’d survived, the relief I felt was so immediate, so deep…I hated myself for it.”
He pauses, clearly, given the sadness in his face, thinking back on that time. Then, he smiles. “But one day, not long after we started the planning stages for Terra Nova, you and I disagreed about something. I don’t even remember what it was, but you were blazing mad at me because I’d pulled rank on you.”
She quirks a small smile and nods. At the encouragement, he goes on, “In that moment, you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. You were glorious, and I was just gone. I went from loving you to being in love with you in about a nanosecond.”
She can’t help the bemused grin that erupts on her face. He lifts an eyebrow at her. “Nathaniel, only you would fall in love with a woman because you found her hot when she was pissed off at you.”
He laughs and hugs her tight. “Why do you think I started baiting you more and more?” He then gets serious again. “We both live relatively dangerous lives, Alicia. We can’t avoid that, at least not all that effectively.” She nods, and he says, “But I can’t worry on it, Alicia. All I can do is love you and Gracie and be as careful as I can.”
“I know.” She sniffles a little. “It was just a little overwhelming. I’m not ready to lose you, Nathaniel, so damn right you’ll be careful.”
He leans down and kisses her hard. She gasps in surprise, clutching at his shirt. His lips leave her mouth, nipping and kissing their way along her jawline. When he gets close to her ear, he murmurs, “Have I mentioned that you bossing me around is almost as sexy as you pissed off at me?”
Feeling suddenly lighter, she laughs and squirms away from him, swatting at his arms as he tries to hold her in place. She retreats to the steps that lead down to the ground. He looks a little disappointed until she looks back at him with a leer. “We’re not due to get Gracie from school for three hours. We should head home and try to sort out a way to pass the time.”
He’s back at her side in a flash. “Sounds like a real challenge.” They descend the stairs together.
She turns around, starting to walk backwards, and reaching out, she wraps her hand in his shoulder holster and drags him along with her. She hums in agreement. “Well, I love a good challenge.”
With that, she turns again and heads for the main part of the colony and their house. She never looks back to make sure he’s following. She doesn’t have to, because she simply knows that he is.
Character/Pairing: Wash/Elisabeth (friendship), Wash/Taylor, Jim/Elisabeth, Mark/Maddy, Skye/Carter, Mira/Guzman
Word Count: ~2300 for this chapter, ~14800 for entire story
Genre: Romance, Drama
Rating: PG-13
Summary: As far as she’s concerned, he’s never allowed to set foot near one of Malcolm’s research projects ever again.
Author’s Note: Fill for morganel’s Friday one word prompt “Quarantined” for Wash and Elisabeth. Note, this is set in the context of my other stories, but definitely not necessary to read those for this to make sense - just be aware that in my context now, Wash and Taylor are married and have a little girl named Gracie, and the Sixers have come back to Terra Nova.
Disclaimer is as usual - no profit, not mine, just borrowing.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Ten Days Later
It’s Friday morning, and Alicia is leaning against the rail in one of the guard towers on the north end of the colony. She and Carter came out here earlier to check out a reported hole in the fence, and after they’d been able to find and mend the hole themselves, she sent Carter back towards command, telling him she’d be back later.
This guard tower isn’t presently manned, and it grants a nice view of their fields and some of the mountains beyond the fence. The railing of this tower is pretty wide, so she hops up on it, leaning back against one of the roof supports as she sits cross-legged for balance.
It’s been over a week since the group in the infirmary was infected with the toxin Malcolm had been studying. Malcolm isn’t allowed back to work until Monday, and he’s still recovering and occasionally short of breath. Skye only had to take it easy for a couple of days, but Elisabeth had benched both Nathaniel and Mira for a full week. They’re both back on duty now, which is a good thing, as they were driving Alicia and Guz both nuts.
The whole experience shook all of them up. She has it on good authority that Carter and Guz are both about a breath away from proposing to Skye and Mira, respectively. She smiles at that thought and muses that if she was a betting woman, she'd put money on Guz and Mira being married inside of a month.
Alicia sighs as she gazes out over the fields, lost in thought. The experience with the toxin left Alicia feeling far more shaken than she likes. Nathaniel is fine now, the cough even mostly gone. But everything that happened brought a truth to light, one she really wasn’t ready to face.
She’s been moody ever since, even quieter than usual. She knows that Nathaniel has noticed that something is wrong - he misses precious little - but he seems to be giving her space. She just feels uneasy. She sighs again and uncrosses her legs, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs.
“I have no idea how you manage to sit like that.” Nathaniel’s voice makes her jump a little, and she has to grip the edge of the rail to not fall.
She looks up in surprise, and she’s dismayed to see that he’s less than two feet from her. He’s reaching for her as if he intends to steady her. She shoots him a glare, and he drops his hands, chuckling.
They look at each other for a moment before he turns serious. “You know, I’ve guessed that something was wrong, that you were distracted, but now I have confirmation. If you didn’t have something on your mind, there’s no way I’d have been able to sneak up on you like that.” He tentatively closes the distance between them, his expression one of concern. “What’s going on, Alicia?”
She briefly considers trying to put him off, but she knows she needs to talk about what’s been bothering her. She expels a nervous breath, closes her eyes and pinches her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know how to talk about it, Nathaniel.” She feels his hands grip her upper arms, and she opens her eyes again.
He’s standing directly in front of her now, and she turns on the rail to face him, letting her feet dangle in front of her. He looks at her, his eyes concerned and almost pleading. “Try, Alicia.”
“I just wasn’t prepared for what happened, Nathaniel. I’m prepared for us to be threatened by things like dinosaurs. But toxic plants that attack your respiratory system? That I wasn’t prepared for.”
“OK, I’ll allow that it was out of left field and pretty damned scary, but I don’t think that’s what this is about.” He pins her with his eyes.
She blinks, and suddenly, she can’t maintain eye contact. She folds her hands in her lap and she looks down, studying them intently. His hands tighten on her arms. Taking a deep breath, she softly says, “I talked to Elisabeth, Nathaniel. I know this probably hit you like it did because of your age, that Skye was infected long before you were, and she barely even had a low grade fever.”
“Alicia, I…” he begins to speak, but she shakes her head vigorously, eyes still turned down.
She finds that she can’t look at him as she speaks. She’s always hated showing weakness, showing vulnerability, and last week left her feeling more vulnerable than she’s felt since being pregnant with Gracie. “Intellectually, I’ve always known that chances are pretty good that I’ll outlive you, barring being eaten by a damned carno or something along those lines. But knowing something in your head and dealing with the potential reality of that are two very different things. And frankly, it’s a truth I wasn’t ready to consider, a truth I wasn’t ready to face.”
She continues to stare at her hands. “You know, I had my mom until I was 14, but outside of that, I’d never had anyone or anything constant in my life. I never relied on people or things.” She finally looks back up at him, this time with tears in her eyes. “Then you stumbled into my life and the medical tent, bleeding and grinning like a damned cheshire cat. You dragged me out of that tent with you that day, and I never looked back.”
She swallows a sob. “After that, you didn’t just make me part of your unit. You took me home with you when we were on leave, made sure I wasn’t spending breaks alone, everything. I don’t know if you understood then, hell, I don’t know if you understand now what that meant to me. You gave me a family. You made me part of your family. My heart broke when Ayani died, but not just because of what I knew it did to you. My heart also broke because I felt like I’d lost my sister and my nephew in one fell swoop.”
He’s silent, clearly surprised by her intensity. She wipes at her eyes. “Nathaniel, the truth is that I’ve loved you since I was nineteen years old. I may have only been in love with you since we started preparing to come here, but I’ve loved you for more than half of my life. Early on, it was as a friend and mentor. Then it was as a friend and colleague, a friend and fellow combatant.”
She pauses, taking another deep breath. “But for more than twenty years, Nathaniel, you’ve been there, even when you weren’t physically there. You’re my constant.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to function without you. I don’t think I’d even know where to start.” A few tears roll down her cheeks then, and she stops trying to wipe them away.
Instead of saying anything, he just pulls her from her perch on the rail and hugs her tight to his body. They stand there for quite some time, long enough for Alicia to get her tears under control.
“You’d start with Gracie, Alicia. She’s where you’d start, and I know that. When I thought you were dead before, I was lost. I tried to focus on the colony, on what I still had, but I couldn’t. I was completely adrift.” He leans back to meet her eyes, his filled with tears this time. “But for either of us, I know Gracie would be what would make us survive. She’d be the anchor we’d need.”
She nods and buries her face in his chest. “Deep down, I know that, Nathaniel, but I need you, too. I’d be able to be there for her, able to keep getting out of bed, but I’m not sure what I’d be able to manage beyond that.”
“Touché.” He hugs her tight to him again. “For what it’s worth, Alicia, I’ve loved you from the moment you first stitched me up and managed, with your rather deft use of eye rolls, sighs and glares, to be deferential and insubordinate at the same time. To this day, I still don’t know how you pulled it off, but there was no way I was leaving that tent without you right behind me. I just knew that was how it had to be.”
He then leans back to catch her eyes again. “But there’s more to it than that, Alicia. The truth is that if there had been no Ayani then, I would’ve been a goner for you in about half a heartbeat. I’d even venture to guess that if I’d met you and Ayani at the same time, as much as I would’ve admired her light and joy and wonder, you would’ve been the one I chose.”
She’s shocked at that, and it must show on her face. “I don’t regret loving Ayani, Alicia. The simple truth is that she was my opposite. Light where I was dark, joyful and innocent where I was jaded and cautious. She changed me, made me lighter. She was the love of my life, in that romantic, love story kind of way.”
Alicia nods and looks away briefly. She’d known that, but it doesn’t make it easier to hear. He won’t let her shy away, though.
He uses his fingers to tip her face back to his, and he kisses her gently, a soft, lingering caress of his lips against hers. “But love of my life or not, Alicia, she wasn’t my soul mate. She may have accepted me, but she didn’t always understand me - and I was fine with that. If she’d understood me, it would’ve stolen some of her light, some of her joy.”
He kisses her again. “But you, Alicia. You see me. You always have. You saw me and knew exactly how to push every single one of my buttons from moment one.”
Holding her face in his palm, he brushes his thumb across her cheek. “So, while Ayani may have been the love of my life, you, Alicia, you’re my soul mate. I think I knew that in the medical tent the day I met you. Keeping you near me was selfish on my part. Back then, every romantic thought was for Ayani, but I needed you too, and so I kept you close, probably ultimately driving away any man who dared to try to get close to you.”
She can’t speak. To say he shocked her with that confession would be a massive understatement. He’s the one to drop his eyes now. “Part of why I pulled away from you a little right after she died was out of guilt. I felt guilty for loving you, even though we were never inappropriate, even though it was never a betrayal of Ayani. But when I found out that you’d survived, the relief I felt was so immediate, so deep…I hated myself for it.”
He pauses, clearly, given the sadness in his face, thinking back on that time. Then, he smiles. “But one day, not long after we started the planning stages for Terra Nova, you and I disagreed about something. I don’t even remember what it was, but you were blazing mad at me because I’d pulled rank on you.”
She quirks a small smile and nods. At the encouragement, he goes on, “In that moment, you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. You were glorious, and I was just gone. I went from loving you to being in love with you in about a nanosecond.”
She can’t help the bemused grin that erupts on her face. He lifts an eyebrow at her. “Nathaniel, only you would fall in love with a woman because you found her hot when she was pissed off at you.”
He laughs and hugs her tight. “Why do you think I started baiting you more and more?” He then gets serious again. “We both live relatively dangerous lives, Alicia. We can’t avoid that, at least not all that effectively.” She nods, and he says, “But I can’t worry on it, Alicia. All I can do is love you and Gracie and be as careful as I can.”
“I know.” She sniffles a little. “It was just a little overwhelming. I’m not ready to lose you, Nathaniel, so damn right you’ll be careful.”
He leans down and kisses her hard. She gasps in surprise, clutching at his shirt. His lips leave her mouth, nipping and kissing their way along her jawline. When he gets close to her ear, he murmurs, “Have I mentioned that you bossing me around is almost as sexy as you pissed off at me?”
Feeling suddenly lighter, she laughs and squirms away from him, swatting at his arms as he tries to hold her in place. She retreats to the steps that lead down to the ground. He looks a little disappointed until she looks back at him with a leer. “We’re not due to get Gracie from school for three hours. We should head home and try to sort out a way to pass the time.”
He’s back at her side in a flash. “Sounds like a real challenge.” They descend the stairs together.
She turns around, starting to walk backwards, and reaching out, she wraps her hand in his shoulder holster and drags him along with her. She hums in agreement. “Well, I love a good challenge.”
With that, she turns again and heads for the main part of the colony and their house. She never looks back to make sure he’s following. She doesn’t have to, because she simply knows that he is.